Google-Stoopid Update

Nicholas Carr responds to criticism of his article on the Internet destroying the ability to concentrate:

Shirky is nothing if not an optimist. He believes that, somehow, we will find a way to “secur[e] for ourselves an ability to concentrate amidst our garden of ethereal delights.” But here he’s stating a desire that he criticizes in others: a desire to turn the clock back. He simply assumes that the “ability to concentrate” will return even as the Net changes so much else about who we are and how we think. It’s telling that Shirky uses gauzily religious terms to describe the Net...as what he’s expressing here is not reason but faith. I hope he’s right, but I think that skepticism is always the proper response to techno-utopianism.

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